Teacher Union: Iraq Vote, Like Teaching. No Apology

How fair is it to demand that Hillary Clinton apologize for her vote on the Iraq War has, as John Edwards and Barack Obama, not so subltly suggest here and here.

According to the president of the state teacher’s union, it’s not fair at all. In fact, her early decision on the war was similar to many decisions he’s made in the class room.

Writing in the March 15 edition of the union’s newspaper, Iannuzzi wrote:

In 34 years of teaching, I needed to make many decisions about students based on what I knew at the end of the first and second marking periods. This, of course, changed as I gathered more information as the school year progressed and had more interactions with each individual student. In some cases, my early decision was incorrect — underestimating or overestimating a student’s ability based on data on hand at the time, incomplete or simply wrong.

I didn’t spend the rest of my year, or years, apologizing or saying “I told you so.” I never thought I should apologize for decisions I needed to make at a given point in time; in fact, most were learning experiences that better prepared me as a teacher.